How to go sub 7
How to go sub 7 hours
Despite the biggest names in triathlon and a huge marketing budget, the Sub 7/8 challenge was announced in 2020 and fizzled into a whimper. Lacking seemingly balanced matchups and any real tangibility, Sub 7/8 was relegated to only murmurings on podcasts and a few lines on tri forums. But on the 21st November 2021, kristian blummenfelt single-handedly put the race, and challenge, back the map. And everyone involved owes him a great debt of gratitude.
In my opinion, the women’s challenge of going Sub 8 and the accompanying head-to-head was always a forgone conclusion. Not if, but when Lucy gets a gap out of the swim, her biking pack only have to keep her away for her to win. And with the special rules, discussed below, I can’t see the 8 hour ‘barrier’ being such for long.
But the men’s race seemed a little too outlandish for many of us. With Ali Brownlee’s injury history being one thing, Kristian was completely unproven at Iron distance racing - was sub 7 even possible? 7:21:12 seemingly changed (nearly) everything in a day.
So with speculation now beginning and many predictions and strategies to be laid out in the coming months. I thought I would start the ball rolling and lay out how I might train an athlete going sub 8 or sub 7 hours at full distance.
Equipment
The first thing that needs to be covered off is the specialist equipment that has been allowed on this attempt. After we work out what time we can take off through equipment alone, we can work out how to shave off the remaining time with the training, pacing, fuelling and drafting variables we have left.
The first is the swim. With specialist wetsuits allowed I should imagine all athletes are working with their relevant brands to produce custom suits for the event. The old Speedo tri elite catch panels come to mind - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErYw1pCYMNY as well as much thicker neoprene through the chest and hips to keep the body line high in the water. A colder water temperature will obviously be better for faster times, so there will be no penalty for the extra neoprene. Lucy Charles and Roka will be heavily incentivised to put out the fastest swim on the day. I can imagine a £2000 one-off short run of wetsuits being released off the back of this.
The bike. From the sub 7 website - ‘Any equipment used by the athletes will comply with World Triathlon and Union Cycliste International rules.’ I can only assume this is a typo, as over 4:1 ratio aerofoils are ubiquitous on all high end tri bikes and no pro triathlete’s position is UCI legal. So if those restrictions are off the table I would be amazed if we didn’t see the following - assuming a flat course (probably F1 track) with banked turns similar to the Tri Battle: Aero shoe covers for the pacers (possibly for the athletes depending on how fast they can put them on), 1x drive trains with limited gear selection to maintain chain line, no bottles or cages on the lead athlete’s bike ( all bottles and fuelling given to them via lead car/pacing athletes), tubeless race tires and fully custom front ends.
And finally the run. Obvious things first: Super shoes a must. Lots of interesting cooling strategies. And sub 2 style fuelling handoffs instead of static aid stations.
Pacing
Where this becomes more interesting from a viewer standpoint and far less interesting from an athletic standpoint, is where we involve the pacers. Each athlete gets 10 total to use throughout the race. Getting this out of the way first, the way I would do it is to have 2 on the swim, 8 on the bike and none on the run, as the energy saving from being 8th wheel in a pursuit-style line of riders is exponentially more than the drafting you get running behind someone. I would aim to burn off pacers as we go through each of the disciplines so that we are left with none on the run. I think that’s the fastest way.
Swim: It would be unwise not to bring in some big names here for TV purposes as they did with the Ingebrigtsen brothers in Sub 2. Gregario Paltrinieri, Ferry Weertman, Katie Ledecky - why not? As communication would be the trickiest part in the swim, having a system to tell the lead swimmer to back off if the main athlete is falling off would be vital. I would suggest a staggered formation, where the named athlete is on the hip of the lead swimmer. If they fall off, the backup lead swimmer at the back of the line taps the feet of the lead swimmer, until the named athlete is back on the hip. Lead and backup-lead swimmers switch at 1900m - aiming to empty the tank. I would say the goal is to go deep in the red here and recover on the bike. So, going for a max effort swim - Paltrinieri can swim a 14min-low 1500m - 57sec/100m pace, with all the wetsuit advantages - 37min for the 3800m. Lucy might be even faster. We’ll get onto the course later.
Bike: I would use all 8 remaining pacers here. Full aero TT kit, ready to go as the named athlete arrives. Here’s where massive time can be made. Assuming no dead turns, flat or rolling course with riders rotating off, keeping the named athlete second from last at all times. Riding in a paceline actually benefits everyone, “the lead rider’s drag is reduced by about 2 to 3% compared to if they were riding solo. The second rider in line experiences a reduction of about 27% while the third and fourth riders see drag reductions of approximately 35%.” And riding in a bigger group can save up to about 44% drag reduction. Obviously the faster the peaceline rides, the bigger the watt savings and the faster the leg is over, the less energy has to be put out. So each rider burying themselves for 22k and pulling off is the fastest way to go. We are probably talking about 15-20mins per 22k @ 6+w/kg for the guys ~48-50km/h, ~5.7w/kg for the ladies ~43-44km/h. So if we take a 70kg rider, he’ll need to kick out 420w for the 15-20mins. For the named athlete behind, saving up to 44% drag, as drag makes up 90% of the resistant forces, their only putting out - 211w. Probably a low z2 effort. My predicted fastest bike split time ~3h 43mins.
Run: Here it’s a proper race and more or less a fresh marathon. Although there are some benefits to drafting, I think the best course of action is spend all the pacers on swim and bike and to let the athletes self-pace the run. Again we can expect to see some fast times. I would expect somewhere in the 2:30s for the women and in the 2:15-2:20s for the men.
So predictions:
Women: 37mins + 4h 05mins + 2h 38mins + 3mins transition = 7h 23sec
Men: 37mins + 3h 43mins + 2h 15mins + 3mins transition = 6h 38mins.
Course
Swim
Like in the Tri Battle, if you can eliminate sighting in the swim, you are going to save even more time. (The Tri battle had a long rope underwater that the athletes could follow). And if we do it downstream we are going to see even faster times.
Bike
An F1 track. Immaculate, wide surface, banked turns and minimal elevation. A lead car to hand out fueling. Multiple laps for athletes to work out if they are on pace or need to push.
Run
Again, a flat course. No dead turns. An F1 track again would make a good suggestion. On the fly fuelling and multiple laps.
Fueling and training
Swim
When we are talking about a 37min swim or potentially even faster we are talking above threshold. If we pair the named athletes with swimmers well above their level - which we should - we should train a lot of speed and VO2 swimming - not what you would normally do for an IM swim! We would, of course, not be fuelling on the fly for the swim.
Bike
Here’s where things get interesting. I would spend much of my time practicing pursuit-style change overs. Lots of long endurance hours in the TT position, working on holding the wheel in front and practicing riding first @ 40, 45 and 50km/h as a team. Working on change-overs, not over-surging and getting fuel to the lead athlete on the the go. Fuelling shouldn’t be overly-aggressive here. After a brief restock after the swim, the goal would be only 50-60g/h at mid to high z2-3 effort. Ramping the cals (and the effort because of fewer drafters) as the riders drop off. Aiming to be fairly topped off going into the run…
Run
Here simply a fast marathon is the name of the game. No need to do specific bike to run sessions. I would follow a typical marathon build routine. Getting in most of the training volume in the run at sub-threshold intensities. Finally I might suggest cutting back on what athletes are typically consuming for an Ironman marathon - the Norwegians are currently putting away 400cals+/h - as it ‘costs’ the body blood and energy to absorb it. As we are coming in pretty fresh and topped up from the bike, typical, lower cal standalone Olympic marathon fuelling strategies might yield faster times.
Conclusion
All in all it’s going to be an interesting affair. With a more Olympic-style swim training. Low intensity pursuit-style drills and teamwork on the bike. And traditional marathon training for the run. Can they do it? I would say in both races it’s now certainly possible. And so the real interest will switch to competition between the athletes where it belongs.
Lucy Charles vs Nicola Spirig - Lucy is the clear favourite on the women’s side. She probably comes out second to Brownlee on the swim, but not by much. Holding off Nicola on the bike will be a difficult task, but if she has the right pacers she’ll head onto the run in front. On the run, if she has a good enough gap she’ll probably break even on marathon split with Nicola. This race will get very interesting if Nicola can bring her back on the bike…
Ali Brownlee vs Kristian Blumenfelt - I’m going to have to go with Kristian here. As this will be a more scientific affair, I think Kristian has the heads around him to set out the right training, as Ali and the Leeds approach has always been more self-coached. Ali smashes Kristian on the swim - 2mins gap. Ali over-bikes or maintains the lead coming off the bike. And then he either pulls up injured or Kristian has the speed over him in the run. I really hope we have a head to head between these two - and being a Brit as well - that Ali proves me wrong.